


Beneath a Metropolis

by PrometheusStandards



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft
Genre: 1920s, Berlin (City), Drug Use, Horror, Strippers & Strip Clubs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 10:01:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17404829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrometheusStandards/pseuds/PrometheusStandards
Summary: A young American architect experiences the debauched pleasures of Weimar Berlin during the roaring twenties.





	Beneath a Metropolis

It is only with great trepidation that I force myself to put these words onto the paper before me, for the memories of the dark and unspeakable things I have seen beneath that accursed metropolis are beyond that which sane men would believe in the realm of the possible. I may not be a sane man then, waking amidst sweat and screams each night, seeking refuge in the blissful embrace of green fairy and much stronger things during the day.

I was a somewhat promising young architect when I first entered Berlin in late summer 1922, eager to see and learn. I was captivated by the modern marvels of the metropolis, as only a young and naive mind could be, and quickly fell into the habits of others my age, smoking, drinking, and other, less nameable things, in the great and glittering diversions of the city. I saw with my own eyes the debauchery at the Wintergarten, underneath its marveled star-speckled ceiling, listened to the grotesque and disturbing suggestions of depravity in cabarets on the Kurfurstendamm, laughing and drinking, oddly enthralled by the air of the city that was so unlike anything my baptist upbringing, though moderate, could have prepared me for. Deeper and deeper I sunk myself into the excesses of man, out of a morbid curiosity as much as a sickening kinship with the delirious deviants engulfing me at every step.

It was at a small and squalid place, the Unausprechliche Genusse, a few steps below the street level, that I met my final descent into the nethermost depths of a hell even Dante could not have imagined. It was my first time in the establishment and I had just taken another dose of excellent cocaine, produced by the country's most industrious supplier of chemicals, when finally a girl took to the stage, in a shocking costume, wet, green and decayed, as if she'd just stepped out of the river Spree, dragging much of its unwholesome, oozing life, usually mercifully hidden from unaccustomed eyes, with her. Her skin a pallid, greenish tone, ichor seeping out of every opening on her body, her steps wet and flopping, glistening droplets of gelatinous black liquids splattering across my table, I felt myself, at the same time, both violently disgusted and disturbingly attracted to the monstrosity, with her pale, dead eyes, her wide mouth and glistening body.

Transfixed I stared at her dance, not elegant and graceful, but somehow slithering, writhing, squirming, her body contorting in indescribable ways that should not be humanly possible. Somewhere, I cared not where, music had started, a nauseous, primitive beat of drums, so deep I felt it in my bones, but I hardly noticed, so occupied was my mind with this, this Thing only an arms length away from me, eyes locked with mine, her undulating body creeping closer and closer, finally sliding off the stage and onto my lap like a rotten sea-side carcass sagging down the side of an abandoned pier, but moving, moving with the abysmal rhythm of the drums. Her body was as wet and cold as I had imagined and I was rigid with fear as it pressed against mine, as if to devour me slowly and all at once.

I have only fleeting impressions of my panicked escape. I know I must have fallen over on the chair, almost suffocating on black slime and flesh thrust into my face. Then only glimpses of a heedless, mindless flight through the rain-slick streets of the city, embraced in a torrential downpour that forbade the forming of any clear image of where I was going. I came to, for a few horrible moments, drenched and alone, teeth shattering, leaning into a doorway I did not know, then my memories seize.

A awoke the next morning in a chair in the small apartment I have rented, freezing, clothes still damp, and hoping, hoping that I had only had the worst drug induced nightmare imaginable. It was a slow dripping that drove me insane at last, the unmistakable sound of some thick, gelatinous substance oozing out of my pockets as I had stirred.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first time I've tried my hand at a Mythos story and while I have clearly deviated from anything HPL would have written, avoiding sexuality almost entirely, I felt it would be a fitting topic in Weimar Berlin at the time.


End file.
